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ESPN2 was initially formatted as a younger-skewing counterpart to its parent network ESPN, with a focus on sports popular among young adult audiences (ranging from mainstream events to other unconventional sports). By the late 1990s, this mandate was phased out, as the channel increasingly served as a second outlet for ESPN's mainstream sports coverage.

As of February 2015, ESPN2 is available to approximately 94,379,000 pay television households (81.1% of households with at least one television set) in the United States.[1]

History

ESPN2 launched on October 1, 1993 at 7:30p.m. Eastern Time. Its inaugural program was the premiere of SportsNight, a sports news program originally hosted by Keith Olbermann and Suzy Kolber – where Olbermann opened the show by jokingly welcoming viewers to "the end of our careers."[2] Launching with an estimated carriage of about 10 million homes, ESPN2 aimed to be a more informal and youth-oriented channel than parent network ESPN, featuring a heavier emphasis on programming that would appeal to the demographic. The youthful image was also reflected in its overall presentation, which featured a graffiti-themed logo and on-air graphics.[3][4]

Its initial lineup featured studio programs such as SportsNight—which host Keith Olbermann characterized as a "lighter" parallel to ESPN's SportsCenter that would still be "comprehensive, thorough and extremely skeptical", Talk2—a Jim Rome-hosted nightly talk show billed as an equivalent to CNN's Larry King Live, Max Out—an extreme sports anthology series carried over from ESPN, and SportsSmash, a five-minute rundown of sports news and scores which aired every half-hour. ESPN2 also featured several half-hour news programs focused on specific sports, such as NFL 2Night (football), NHL 2Night (hockey) and RPM 2Night (auto racing). Event coverage would focus on coverage of mainstream sports popular within the 18–34 age demographic, such as auto racing, college basketball and NHL hockey (which was branded as NHL Fire on Ice),[5] while also covering atypical sports such as BMX and other extreme sports.[3]

ESPN2 would also be used to showcase new technology and experimental means of broadcasting events: on September 18, 1994, ESPN2 simulcast CART's Bosch Spark Plug Grand Prix using only onboard camera feeds. In 1995, ESPN2 introduced the "BottomLine", a persistent news ticker which displayed sports news and scores. The BottomLine would later be adopted by ESPN itself and all of its future properties.[6]

In the late 1990s, ESPN2 began to phase out its youth-oriented format, and transitioned to becoming a secondary outlet for ESPN's mainstream sports programming; telecasts began to adopt a more conventional style, and the "graffiti 2" logo was dropped in 2001 in favor of a variation of the standard ESPN logo. On-screen graphics (such as the BottomLine) used a blue color scheme instead of red to differentiate it from ESPN. On February 12, 2007, the ESPN2 branding was stripped from most on-air presentation and replaced with ESPN: the ESPN2 brand is now solely used for station identification.[7]

ESPN2's former flagship show, the morning sports/entertainment program Cold Pizza, achieved minimal success and saw several format and host changes. In January 2006, it was supplanted by the television simulcast of ESPN Radio's Mike and Mike in the Morning (which moved from ESPNews) and moved to a later time slot (10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time). In May 2007, Cold Pizza moved from New York City to the ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut and was renamed ESPN First Take. After ESPN became part of a new broadcast contract with the association, ESPN2 also premiered the new daily show NASCAR Now (similar to the previous RPM 2Night, except only focusing on NASCAR) in February 2007. Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith, a program that featured interviews with popular sports figures, had averaged extremely low ratings,[10][11] and had also faced several timeslot changes, until it was finally canceled in January 2007.

On August 8, 2018, ESPN2 stunted as "ESPN8: The Ocho"—an homage to a fictitious eighth ESPN channel portrayed in the 2004 film DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, dedicated to unconventional and obscure sporting events. The event—which also included airings of the original film— was a follow-up to a similar marathon aired by ESPNU the previous year.[12]

Simulcasting

ESPN2 has also simulcast many game telecasts with ESPN, usually as a part of a "Full Circle" or "Megacast" broadcast, which covers a single telecast across several ESPN networks, with each network providing a different form of coverage (such as different camera angles). ESPN2 also simulcasts some programming from ESPNews, often during local blackouts of scheduled national game telecasts, and for a while provided a simulcast of ESPN Deportes' edition of SportsCenter on Sundays. In return, ESPN2 programming is often seen on ESPN during blackouts of games in certain markets.

ESPN2 also often carries SportsCenter at times when the broadcast on ESPN is delayed by a sporting event that overruns into one of the program's scheduled timeslots. ESPN and ESPN2 also jointly aired two episodes of a documentary special called This is SportsCenter, in which ESPN showed a documentary showing the production of an edition of SportsCenter, while the finished product aired on ESPN2. The documentary would usually air for two hours, where the first hour would cover the preliminary production of the night's show on ESPN, while ESPN2 aired ESPN's regular programming. The second hour usually spent time at production control while covering reaction to the night's developments.

High definition

ESPN2 broadcasts in high definition in the 720p resolution format, which was launched in January 2005. In January 2011, the separate ESPN2HD branding began to be phased out, as in May of that year, the channel would shift to using the AFD #10 flag to transmit the channel's standard definition feed in letterboxedwidescreen, mirroring the display of the high definition feed, with the SD feed eventually phased out to allow downscaling of the HD feed for the standard definition channel.